--Cut--

The last and final C, Cut.

Cut
This is arguably the most important of the 4C's. The cut grade of a diamond refers to how 'well' the diamond is cut into the commercial stone from the raw stone. The cut of a diamond directly reflects how shiny and sparkly, and the brilliance and fire a diamond gives off. An excellent cut diamond can often mask flaws and lower grades in the other C's.

Technically speaking, the cut of a diamond is how much light is reflected back to the eye and surface of the diamond. A badly cut diamond will lose all the light by reflecting it to the sides or even bottom of the diamond. It can further be classified as shallow or deep cut depending on where exactly the light is reflected. In both cases, it is not reflected back up to the table of the diamond. On the contrary, excellent cut diamonds reflect maximum light right back up to the table and thus gives it more fire and brilliance.

That is also the reason why an excellent cut diamond can mask other defects. For example, if there are inclusions in an excellent cut diamond, the amount of light reflected back can make the inclusion harder to spot, or smaller than it appears. The same can be said for a lower colour grade like I, or J stone with excellent cut. The amount of light reflected back can offset the yellowish colour and make the stone appear more white than it actually is.

Cut is generally measured from Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, and Excellent. However, different grading bodies have different grading for Cut. For GIA, the highest cut is an Excellent cut. For AGS generally likes to grade their cut on a scale of of 0 - 10, with 0 being Ideal/highest, and 10 being Poor/worse cut. It's not entirely true that GIA Excellent = AGS Ideal 0, but they are pretty much the best cut stones around. Again, using GemScan, they have their Ideal cut, which is their highest cut grade. But do not compare this to the AGS Ideal 0 cut, as the latter is far better.

Personally, I try to maximize this spec. As I mentioned, having the highest cut can mask out and offset the other specs, so having an Excellent cut, G stone is probably better than a Good cut, E colour stone. Well, it is really hard to compare like that, but you get the idea =P Drawing comparisons to RPG games again, the cut is like your main weapon, your sword, Ultima Weapon, Ragnarok and colour and clarity are like head or body armour. If you were to only have one item, you'd pick your weapon, your best sword right? Same analogy here =)